Quote Originally Posted by Eyvind View Post
That raises the question of whether there are new souls at all...up until now, souls get dissolved in the lifestream except a few "strong" ones. Is that wrong, an in-universe mistake...? Or are we intact old souls getting our old pieces back, while new souls are getting random infusions of unrelated aether?
It's actually one of the bits of new information which confuses me greatly, because if all souls had existed as Ancients, then how do we explain Alpha.

Who clearly and explicitly got a new soul at the end of the Omega questline, due to their experiences and choices. Did they pick up a random floating Ancient soul?

Quote Originally Posted by Absimiliard View Post
One of the larger theories about the Echo is that it's actually a byproduct of being tempered by Hydaelyn. Can't prove without doing some hardcore cherry picking, but it's an interesting approach all the same.
The evidence against that (based on what we know about tempering) is pretty clear-cut, though. (Namely, people with the Echo very clearly working against Hydaelyn.) So the usual counter-argument is that maybe tempering doesn't work the way we think, which is possible, but lacks any real evidence other than "what if".

Similarly, we've seen and heard of people with the Blessing of Light work against Hydaelyn too. Ardbert and the Warriors of Darkness are the main examples brought up, and there's also Saint Ajora in Ivalician history, who was a Warrior of Light who unsealed Ultima the High Seraph, which is probably something Hydaelyn was expressly against.